Note on the gregarious flowering and conservation of Chimonocalamus griffthianus in India

Chimonocalamus griffithianus is a socio-economically important hill bamboo growing in the north-eastern states of India that flower gregariously. It is important to record the flowering episodes of populations so that post-flowering conservation and management can be guided. This study records flowering in a population of C. griffithianus from Nokrek National Park, West Garo Hills (Meghalaya, India). We observed a gregarious flowering followed by the mortality of entire clumps and sparse germination. By scrutinizing earlier flowering records from different populations, we found that flowering episodes have not been synchronized among populations, with different populations flowering at different times. Consequently, the development of a database and recording the flowering of different populations could be very important for post flowering conservation and management of the species, and the conservation methods could further be strengthened by incorporating information related to genetic diversity and population genetic structure.